Album Review: Eventide - Waterline
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
When French doom death metal crew, Epitaphe were working on the follow material to their second album, simply entitled II, they realised their creative direction was taking them in a more Droning direction. Rather than shelving it and wait for a right time for it to be used, they initiated Eventide and Waterline is the four-track album of those sessions.
Book-ended by two lengthy tracks, the journey begins with the tune, Eventide, a slow building intersecting of simple chords, allowed to develop organically. I’m reminded of Shadows of the Sun-era Ulver in these early moments, as the music is given ample room to breath and grown. A saxophone draws comparisons with Vangelis’ score for Blade Runner and the hypnotic use of ambient waves makes for a languid listen.
But there’s something wicked this way coming. You can feel it as the track builds to the halfway point and relaxed chords become harsh and dissonant. Dense and unwieldly, the drones take on a Sunn-like quality, immense and overwhelming, they crave a resolution that is rarely realised.
The album’s title track takes the listener in a quite different direction, with unexpectedly bright notes floating atop 8-bit electronics. At just seven-minutes, Waterline is a more upbeat and jazz-infused composition, and it’s only as it enters its final strait that a darkness descends and the saxophone fades into the background, its breath replaced by a howling wind. Third track, Adrift is a graceful, two-minute piano piece, beautifully played.
The final track, Sphere, runs at eighteen and a half minutes and begins like Eventide, with a simple chord interaction, though this time the saxophone heralds in ghostly voices and there is something – almost Lovercraftian – scratching at the edges of the tune. This time out, the droning chords don’t manage to find their footholds, and the screeching guitars are held at bay. Leaving a lilting jazz-tone to leave the album on a positive note.
Eventide’s record landed in my inbox at just the right time as I was at Sunn’s show in Manchester last night and the potential of droning chords and lengthy compositions is at the forefront of my mind. Like Sunn’s Pryoclasts album, which grew from the recording sessions of Life Metal, so Eventide’s jams here have an existence previously unconceived.
Generally speaking the Drones on Waterline aren’t as confrontational as those from Sunn and therefore could act as a gateway to anyone curious about the genre, but not quite brave enough to throw themselves headlong in to White1 just yet.
